porize and discretionize and all the other "izes" by which the
politicians were hedging right and wrong and somehow euchring the many
in the interests of the few and transforming democracy into plutocracy.
Besides, memory that merged to conscious realization was playing in
lambent flames through his whole being round the form of the figure
against the skyline of the Ridge.

The light of the cow-boy camp blinked through the lilac mist of the
Valley. A veil impalpable as dreams hovered over the River. The boom
and roll of a snow cornice falling somewhere in the Gorge behind the
Holy Cross came in dull rolling muffled thunder through the spruce
forests. Had her eyes flashed it in that recognition of love; or had
she said it; or had the thought been born of the peace that had come?
It kept coming back and back to Wayland as the boom of falling snow
faded, _as if one man or generation of men, could stay the workings of
the laws of eternal righteousness by refusing to heed, any more than a
man could stop an avalanche by refusing to heed the law of the
snowflake_!

He heard the wordless chant that the suff of the evening wind sang;
that the storm wind of the mountains shouted in spring as from a
million trumpets; that the dream winds of the ghost mornings forerunner
of fresh life for the sons of men whispered, singing, chanting,
trumpeting the message that snowflake and avalanche told: yet beside
him on the slab seat sat a man who heard none of those voices, and knew
no law but the law of his own desire to get.

The Ranger drew a deep breath of the pervading fragrance, a tang of
resin and balsam, a barky smell of clean earth-mould and moss, an odor
as of some illusive frankincense proffered from the vesper chalices and
censer cups of the flower world.

"Great thing to be alive night like this," opened the Senator. Then he
pulled down his waist coat and pulled up his limp spine and wheeled on
the slab seat facing the Ranger. Very quietly, in a soft even voice he
was reasoning--

"We have been fighting each other for four years now?"

"We certainly have, Mr. Senator."

"You're a good fighter, Wayland! I like the way you fight! You fight
square; and you fight hard; and you never let up."

No answer from the Forest Ranger.

"I wouldn't really have enough respect for you to say what I am going
to say, if you hadn't fought exactly as you have fought--"

What Wayland was saying to himself was what Moyese would no